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Communications

Tools of communication have transformed American society time and again over the past two centuries. The Museum has preserved many instruments of these changes, from printing presses to personal digital assistants.

The collections include hundreds of artifacts from the printing trade and related fields, including papermaking equipment, wood and metal type collections, bookbinding tools, and typesetting machines. Benjamin Franklin is said to have used one of the printing presses in the collection in 1726.

More than 7,000 objects chart the evolution of electronic communications, including the original telegraph of Samuel Morse and Alexander Graham Bell's early telephones. Radios, televisions, tape recorders, and the tools of the computer age are part of the collections, along with wireless phones and a satellite tracking system.

This patent model demonstrates an invention for a typesetting machine; the invention was granted patent number 174901. The patent details a keyboard-operated typesetting machine that set type in a line and then broke the line into column lengths. Patentee Charles Dickinson was at some time a partner in the development of the Burr-Empire line of typesetting machines.

This patent model demonstrates an invention for improvements to a type-distributing machine which was granted patent number 174915. The machine was invented by Charles W. Dickinson and was patented in 1872 and 1875. The rights were assigned to Samuel W. Green, who reassigned them to Edward N. Dickerson, trustee for Henry A. Burr. Burr, a hat manufacturer, was the proprietor of the Burr, later Empire, typesetter.

This patent model demonstrates an invention for a typesetting machine which was granted patent number 174916. The type was stored vertically in channels, and was dropped piece by piece down converging tracks behind a glass panel, and assembled in a long line in a raceway at the bottom. The line was divided and space-fitted by a second operator. As with Lorenz's first patent, the rights were assigned indirectly to Henry Burr.

This patent model demonstrates an invention for a flatbed cylinder perfecting press which was granted patent number 175036. The patent dealt with perfecting presses in which the first side of a sheet was printed from type on a cylinder, and the second from a flat form. Normally slip sheets were used in such presses. This invention replaced the slip sheets with a length of tympan paper stretched between rollers, a new section being wound out for every impression. The invention was widely adopted.

This patent model demonstrates an invention for a fast card feeder, which was shown attached to a model printing press; the invention was granted patent number 182104. William Clark had taken out an earlier patent for the press, which was sold as Daughaday's Model (Patent 155927; 1874).

This patent model demonstrates an invention for a machine for rounding and backing books which was granted patent number 184198. The patent detailed improved methods of guiding the book and controlling the rounding rollers. Two books could be processed at once--one being rounded while the other was backed. Edwin Crawley, a Cincinnati bookbinder, continued to work on the problems of rounding and backing, and in 1891 introduced a machine that set industry standards for many years.

This patent model demonstrates an invention for a book-sewing machine which was granted patent number 184961. The machine was capable of sewing a large number of volumes without stopping the machine. It was an improvement on an earlier machine patented by David M. Smyth.

This patent model demonstrates an invention for a book-stitching machine which passed a needle lengthwise through the folded leaves of books; the invention was granted patent number 184989. Patentee James Crawford Smyth was one of David McConnel Smyth's family. The two worked together on a number of inventions.

This patent model demonstrates an invention for a typecasting machine which was granted patent number 187278. The patent describes a machine for the rapid production of replica type, from originals made for the purpose in a hard metal such as steel. The type could have raised or sunken letters, and a straight, concave, or convex surface for printing on flatbed or rotary presses.